Bush Welcomes The Idea Of Exile For Iraqi Leader

January 31, 2003|By SONNI EFRON Special to the Daily Press

WASHINGTON — President Bush said for the first time Thursday he would welcome exile for Saddam Hussein, and a meeting between the president and a top Saudi official touched off a flurry of speculation that a credible effort is under way to offer a haven to the Iraqi leader.

There was no indication that Saddam or his sons would accept exile, and some analysts continued to dismiss it as wishful thinking. Nevertheless, the high-level discussions, and comments by top Bush administration officials, suggest that an exile plan advocated by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Gulf states is being actively pursued.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Saturday, February 1, 2003.A map on Friday's front page showing the breakdown of Europe's support for war with Iraq failed to label Estonia and Lithuania. Neither has taken an official stance on the issue.

Saudi Arabia reportedly has overt or tacit support for the idea from a number of other nations, including Egypt, Turkey and Syria, and Bush's endorsement was seen as essential for such an offer to have any credibility with the security-obsessed Iraqi leader.

For Bush, who spent most of the day lobbying other world leaders for support on his Iraq policy, declaring support for exile was also an important political signal to the anxious Arab world that he is still open to last-ditch peacemaking efforts.

"Hopefully, the pressure of the free world will convince Mr. Saddam Hussein to relinquish power," Bush said. "And should he choose to leave the country, along with a lot of the other henchmen who have tortured the Iraqi people, we would welcome that, of course. The use of military troops is my last choice, not my first."

Details of the exile package envisioned by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal were not released, and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declared, "The less said, the better."

Prince Saud, who is understood to be spearheading the effort, insisted that the subject of exile never even came up in his meeting with the president. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, which held a recent conference in Turkey on the exile option, have refused public comment and maintained that they do not meddle in the internal affairs of other countries.

But Bush and other administration officials were talking openly about it.

"Certainly, if Saddam Hussein were to leave, and his son stayed behind and his son had weapons of mass destruction, the world would be just as much at risk," Fleischer said. Any successor regime would have to be dedicated to peace and disarmament, Fleischer said, but he wouldn't speculate on how many members of Saddam's family or entourage would have to leave the country in order to meet the U.S. demand for a changed regime.

Former U.S. diplomats with Middle East experience said that Saudi Arabia, or possibly Egypt, would be the most likely country to offer to play host to Saddam.

Both countries are eager to head off a war they feel would be highly destabilizing, both have good security, and both have good relations with the United States, a key factor in reassuring Saddam that he would not face immediate assassination by U.S. agents or Predator aircraft once he left Iraq.

The Saudis in particular would be delighted if they could repair battered relations with the United States by brokering a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis, the diplomats said.